The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Tuesday, 30 October 2018

The £420
million for potholes that Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, announced at
yesterday’s budget, was his best gag in the whole 71 minute budget statement to
Parliament. The real jokes, by contrast, were painfully lame. But the pothole
money is a neat metaphor for the UK economy, in that it is a patch up of the
nation’s economic policy, meant to see the country through until next year’s
spending review.

A perfect
example is the extra £650 million for social care, which is to fill in the hole
in this funding for this issue for the next twelve months, until it is sorted
out permanently at some stage in the future. The government has promised a
Green Paper on funding social care but it has yet to materialise, with an
expected date of launch before the end of this year. Last year’s hole filler
was to raise council tax, but this can’t really be repeated year on year. Big
decisions are being put off.

There was
some welcome news in extra, mainly future, funding for the NHS and the ending of
new Private Finance Initiative deals for public sector contracts, but that’s
about it.

Other fiscal
measures in the budget only undo the damage caused by the government’s
austerity agenda, like the extra funding for Universal Credit, roughly the
amount cut from the scheme by George Osborne when he was Chancellor. Many Tory
MPs had pressed for this, so Hammond was keeping them happy, whilst having a
dig at Osborne.

An increase
in income tax personal allowances, worth only about £130 per year to basic rate
taxpayers, probably less than £10 per month once National Insurance
contributions are factored in. Higher rate payers will gain around £860 per
year, less National Insurance contributions. More money for those who don’t
really need it, and less for those who do, it is typical of this Tory
government.

But what of
the end of austerity, that the Prime Minister, Theresa May announced at Tory party
conference? Well, the budget falls way short of this. Funding for government
departments will at best flat line, outside of health, so cuts to public
services will continue largely unabated throughout 2019-20.

What Hammond
did say was that ‘the end of austerity is in sight,’ but only if you have a
telescope, as he said this will not be until 2024. Not even a case of jam
tomorrow, but jam in five years time, perhaps, if Brexit doesn’t cause the UK
economy to go into recession. That would mean fourteen years of austerity inflicted
by the Coalition and full blown Tory governments. By which time public services
if they exists at all will be basic and geographically variable.

So, austerity
is set to continue, with only a slight softening of the impacts generally. The
Tories know that the public is getting very weary of the austerity agenda, so
their rhetoric hints at ending it, but their actions say otherwise. This is
because austerity always was an ideological choice for the Tories, to cut the
public realm and reduce the size of state to only minimum proportions.

There will
need to be tax raised in the future to pay for adult social care, one way or
another with a rising ageing population, but outside of health and care, all
other services will continue to be cut, including a further £1.3 billion from
local authority funding. Public sector employees will continue to get below
inflation pay rises whereas high earners will continue to reward themselves often
for failure and pay less tax on their increased incomes.

Of course, we
may well be shut of this government before 2024. There needs to be a general
election by 2022 at the latest, and the way things are going it might come a
good deal earlier than that. It can’t come soon enough.

It can be
easy to feel hopeless, like there’s nothing we can do to stop our species from
obliterating the planet as we know it in less
than a generation. But there’s one sect of people who think they have the
answer and, if everyone would just get on board, could easily curb the effects
of climate change. It’s called ecosocialism, and it’s exactly as radical as it
sounds.

“Ecosocialism
combines the ideas of ecology and socialism, meaning that you have a society
without class divisions that lives in some kind of harmony or balance with
nature,” Victor Wallis, author of Red-Green
Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism, told me in a phone
interview . “You can’t make the decisions necessary for the health of the
environment on the basis of profit calculations.”

Though
proponents of the movement have trouble detangling the two ideologies, the
overlap may not be immediately apparent to everyone. After all, there are
profits to be made from the fight against climate change: think of renewable
energy or electric cars. These industries don’t exist out of some corporate
altruism, they exist because they’re profitable. And they’re growing rapidly—in
2017, more
than 500,000 new jobs in renewable energy were created around the world,
bringing the total number of people employed in the sector to 10 million, and $335.5billion of new investments were made in the industry.

But
ecosocialists argue even if some parts of capitalism can advance an
environmental agenda, the rest of the market will still be working against it,
and we’ll never get where we need to be.

“Unless you
do away with capitalism, you’ll still have the other companies that are much
more influential and bigger in scale, like oil companies,” Wallis said. “There
is ultimately a clash in the wider scheme of things, even if you have one
sector of a capitalist market that responds to people’s concerns about the
environment.”

The other
aspect of socialism that Wallis says meshes well with environmentalism is
leveling the playing field. You may not like that your job at a coal mine
contributes to climate change, but you still need to feed your family and pay
your bills. If we could flatten out class structures so that was no longer a
concern, more people would be able to participate in the changes we need to
make.

But what does
an ecosocialist society even look like? Do we all live in vertical farms
together, sharing crops and riding bicycles to power our light bulbs? Eric
Holthaus, a meteorologist, reporter, and ecosocialist, told me it doesn’t have
to be that dramatic of a shift.

“It’s not
going to require everyone giving up all their possessions and living on a farm
for the rest of their lives,” Holthaus said in a phone interview.

Holthaus
argues that we have the technology to rapidly switch to a world that runs on
carbon-free energy, but that won’t happen in the current structure because it
doesn’t benefit those already at the top. He pointed to the fact that studies
have shown
just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions. If we created a government willing to strictly regulate these
companies, it would make a drastic impact and open the door to a clean energy
future.

This all
sounds peachy, but it also sounds impossible, especially under the current
climate-change-denying administration in the US. It doesn’t seem likely that we
could make such a massive global shift in enough time to slow down this runaway
train of destruction. While Wallis largely agreed, quipping that even though
it’s highly unlikely, it’s “our only option,” Holthaus was a little more
optimistic.

“Think of 30
years ago: 1988 was a very different world,” he said. “The example I always go
back to is gay marriage. At one point, it felt impossible. It felt like an
issue we would never change. But with a lot of people working behind the scenes
and very publicly for decades, the political world switched within just a few
years.”

Holthaus
thinks we can see similar switches with climate change, as more people become
aware of the dire straits we’re all in and decide, y’know, we’d like to stay on
this planet for awhile.

And it’s not
just a fringe movement. The US
Green Party has embraced ecosocialism as a core tenant of its platform
since 2016. Democratic socialism has seen a surge in popularity this year,
including the election of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who
ousted a 10-term incumbent for a congressional seat in New York this summer.
The Democratic Socialists of America organization has
also adopted the ecosocialism philosophy and has an ecosocialism working
group.

Regardless of
how tightly you subscribe to the notion of ecosocialism, both Holthaus and
Wallis recommended getting out and getting active. Find like minded
individuals, groups, and political parties, get organized, and start living in
a way that will make this kind of transition easier. Though it may not be a
panacea, at this stage in the game, I for one am happy to explore any idea that
people believe will bring us back from the brink.

“I think it’s
possible to have the world that we want and the world that we need to have,”
Holthaus said. “I want to believe that that’s true.”

Friday, 26 October 2018

It would be
comical if the UK government and prime minister were not such a shambles at the
moment, at this crucial stage for the country. As we approach what is probably
the most critical period for Britain since the end of world war two, Theresa
May appears to have no idea as to how to look after our interests, and to make
matters worse, she seems to think she can just bluff her way through as
theimpending national crisis looms. She
is making it up as she goes along.

It is now
more than two years since May succeeded David Cameron as leader of the Tory
party and prime minister. Cameron wasn’t a hard act to follow, as he whistled
his way out of public life after setting in motion events that have led to this
pass. Lazy, dripping with privilege and arrogance, it should have been easy to
impress by comparison, but May has flunked it.

Yes, she was
dealt a difficult hand with the result of the Brexit referendum, but she has played
it all wrong, with a series of strategic mistakes. The country was crying out for
someone to bring us together, but May just furthered the divide with
her ill judged rhetoric and no discernible plan. She triggered Article 50
before she had decided even remotely how we will leave the European Union
(EU).

May attacked
the 16 million remain voters as ‘citizens of nowhere,’ insisted that 'no deal is
better than a bad deal’ and failed to give guarantees to the 3 million EU
nationals residing in the UK , that they would be allowed to stay here. Even
Brexiters like Michael Gove said that giving such a guarantee would be ‘the
decent thing to do'. No they were held as bargaining chips in the opening round of
negotiations which inevitably led to a lack of goodwill on the part of the EU.

Then May
called a snap general election, after previously ruling it out, pursued the
hardest of Brexit language during the campaign, and promptly lost the
Parliamentary majority that she had inherited from Cameron. To salvage
something from the disaster May was forced into bribing the bigots of the
Democratic Unionist Party to cling onto power by her finger tips. A series of
bad calls, quite unprecedented in UK politics, to my memory.

But more
than the incompetence it is her untrustworthiness which the most shocking
aspect of May's reign. She began by saying that she would tackle the ‘burning
injustices’ at play in the country, but is there even a shred of evidence from
the last two years that she meant it? No.

May then
took to prefacing anything she said publicly with ‘I have been clear…’ before
going onto say something that is anything but clear. In December last year, she
agreed to the EU’s back stop position on keeping the border open between
Northern Ireland and the Republic, but seems to be breaking that commitment,
saying it is unacceptable now. Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European
Commission, revealed this week that May had been the one who suggested that we
could stay in the transitional period for longer than planned after our formal
Brexit. May denies this, but with her track record, I know who I believe.

In 2009, May
told her constituents in Maidenhead "we must say no to a third runway at
Heathrow", but approved the expansion just after becoming prime minister.
At about this time she called in the decision to go ahead with the new Hinkley
Point nuclear power station, only to change her mind and give it the go-ahead.

Simon
Wren-Lewis, a professor at Oxford University and a leading economist, strongly
denied the prime minister's suggestion in Parliament on Wednesday, that he had
said (in a chapter he wrote for a book, titled Economics for the Many) that the
figures in Labour's last manifesto ‘did not add up’. The claim appeared to be ‘a
deliberate lie told to gain political effect’, he said. The facts are easily
checked, but May just can’t seem to stop herself from making things up.

May told the
Tory party conference earlier this month, that austerity is over, but who has
any confidence that is not just another fabrication?

We know that
most politicians are a bit slippery, but when the prime minister tells blatant
lies, it is no surprise that the public concludes that you can’t believe a word
May says, and become disillusioned with our democratic system in general.

Tuesday, 23 October 2018

The recent tensions about proposed changes to
the 2004 Gender Recognition Act - to allow people identifying as transgender to
legally change their gender without medical diagnosis or other evidence - could
(or maybe should) be a gift for conspiracy theorists.

Among the most prominent theories is that the
proposals are the work of private medicine providers and pharmaceutical
companies keen to cash in on the likely resulting increase in demand for gender
reassignment surgery, drugs and other treatment. Another is that it’s a plot by
the right to distract the left and liberals from effectively challenging the
Government’s incompetence and all-round viciousness by occupying us with splits
and hand-wringing about how to critique the proposed changes without appearing
to be against trans rights.

Yet another is that the security forces
(that’s right - those folks who infiltrated and had relationships with
environmental activists in the 1990s) are manipulating young politicos to
passionately promote a highly individualistic strand of identity politics, to
take energy away from tackling climate crisis, loss of biodiversity,
inequality, growing international instability and other bigger strategic
issues. Or that the ‘trans extremists’ (as some commentators have dubbed them)
are misogynists, keen to undermine the gains made by women in recent decades
and reassert global male dominance

Whatever the underlying impetus, the upshot is
that there has been precious little thoughtful, in-depth discussion on the left
about the implications of the proposed new rules.

While there can be no denying that trans
people deserve the right to live in peace and security in their desired sex or
gender, it was intriguing that the trans lobby, as well as many of those
campaigning for lesbians, gays and bisexuals, leapt so quickly to support the
draft legislation and to attack as transphobic anyone who suggested that it
would be good to look at the issues in more detail. The response to even the
mildest of Guardian editorials has been claims from trans people that they are
being made to feel unsafe or that their very existence is being challenged,
while ignoring the fact that anyone questioning the changes are denounced as
TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) and subjected to violent threats
on social media.

The issue has caused almost as big a rift in
the Green Party as allegations of anti-Semitism have in the Labour Party. Trans
activists called the police to disperse a group of three middle-aged women
outside the Green Party’s autumn conference who were attempting to give out
leaflets providing a feminist perspective on the proposals. And Labour has not
escaped entirely: trans lobbying resulted in Jeremy Corbyn declaring his
support for the legal changes with the result (according to Labour Women for
Women’s Rights) that women are leaving the party.

The government’s consultation has now closed,
but several pertinent questions remain unanswered, such as:

What is the motivation?

It’s bizarre that a particularly
right-wing Tory government, preoccupied with Brexit and the mess caused by some
of its previous legislation, such as Universal Credit, would spend
Parliamentary time on a minority rights issue. The consultation document and
accompanying factsheets read as though they have been drafted by trans
activists rather than lawyers or civil servants. The government doesn’t have a
track record in doing the right thing. What are they seeking to gain from
relaxing procedures to change gender identity?

What are the implications of self-certification for trans people?

At least one group of
transsexuals has expressed ‘deep concern’ about the proposed weakening of
controls on who can self-select their gender. Their concerns include the
blurring of differences between transsexual and transgender people.

They state that transsexual is a
“medically diagnosed condition from childhood. It involves acute stress from
knowing that psychologically that person is of opposite sex to the physiology
of their body. A transsexual person knows that you cannot change biological sex
but extensive psychotherapy and medical assistance alter their body to match
with the mind and live in harmony. A large majority have had surgical
alteration.” Whereas a transgender person has “a desire to adopt the lifestyle
of the opposite sex, full time or part time, often expressing this via clothing
and makeup. The desire to have surgery or other medical treatments is much less
common (some suggest as low as 10 per cent). Few wish to see doctors or be
psychiatrically evaluated. Some transition back and forth.”

What are the implications for women’s protected spaces?

There has already been at least
one case of a self-identified trans woman prisoner being transferred to a
women’s prison (although she was still physically male) where she sexually
assaulted two female prisoners.

People working with the homeless
report having to deal with male rough sleepers who self-identify as women to
gain access to women’s shelters. This is sometimes because women’s shelters
tend to be nicer and safer, but could also be to gain access to vulnerable
women. Even if it’s the former, many homeless women are fleeing violent men, so
being confronted by a biological male in a supposedly women-only space is
likely to be traumatic.

More broadly, self-identified trans
women would be able to use female toilets and changing rooms, and to access
facilities, such as youth clubs, gym and swimming sessions, reserved for women
and girls. These sessions are often the only opportunity for women and girls
from some religious and cultural backgrounds to participate. It’s highly likely
that they would not be able to attend in the presence of of trans females who
were physically male.

Where are the voices of female-to-male transgender people?

Almost all of the public support
for self-identification has come from male-to-female transgender people but
almost none from the female-to-male trans community. Is that because they
understand the risks to women’s safe spaces, which they possibly have
experience of?

What about male behaviour?

Trans activists claim to be the most persecuted of any
minority in Britain. Given that these claims come from male-to-female trans
people, presumably the persecution comes from men. Yet the proposed amendments
to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act do nothing to address male violence or
attitudes. If the activists were genuinely concerned about enabling trans
people to live in their desired gender, safe from aggression or abuse, surely
they should be more concerned about tackling the source of the problems.
However, none of the trans lobby groups has actually mentioned male behaviour.

Regardless of the worth of the proposed
amendments (and any possible underlying malign agenda), they have caused deep
divisions in left-leaning political parties and campaign groups such as
Stonewall. The real question is not whether transgender people should self
identify (or whether Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic) but how can the (green)
left build its confidence and develop a robust overarching political agenda,
while being inclusive of (but not taken over by) special interest groups.

Unless we can do that, we will continue to be
vulnerable to emotional pressure from the loudest voices, which saps energy
from the challenging task of creating a fairer society that can live within the
planet’s resources.

Dee
Searle is a member of Camden Green Party and a Green Left Supporter

Sunday, 21 October 2018

For
a short time very recently the latest IPCC report on climate change hit the
headlines and everyone - not just those committed to reducing it - was reminded
of the accelerating costs to the planet and continuing livelihoods of carrying
on the burning of fossil fuels. The report did not pull punches and said we had
until 2030 to take steps well beyond any yet enshrined in policies to prevent
the impending 3 degree rise this century, with the devastating impact on
millions of lives, on cities, on species survival entailed.

Yet
in our high consumption and celebrity news culture, that message again recedes
and being able to do business as usual, or even faster, whether with Brexit or
without Brexit, colonises discussions of public interest. Climate change is
important perhaps, we seem to be told, but getting markets and business
opportunities in order has to come first.And the market can find further incentives to help tackle climate
change.

But
it is the very functioning of the market and the social and political relations
constructed to maintain and enhance it which have driven fossil fuel extraction
to such high levels, and just as importantly steered the ways in which
technological invention and change to produce energy have developed. It took
the Industrial Revolution and the drive for entrepreneurial profit, to give
coal a central position in the economy. And the big acceleration in energy
consumption from the 1970s following the oil shocks and crises of that decade
has been driven by neo-liberal and de-regulatory capitalism.

These
are conclusions drawn by Simon Pirani in this new book which traces the history
of fossil fuel burning from pre-industrial times to the present day, with a
comprehensive review of available data and a wide-ranging use of sources across
the world. He notes the now accepted terminology of the Anthropocene but is
quick to point out that what matters most is how the political economy of
societies determines demands for energy and then directs technological know-how
in certain directions.

Rural
electrification in India varies considerably between states depending on the
social, political and economic pressures at work so that where for instance a
social movement was strong electrification was rolled out while elsewhere urban
and industrial investment meant the poor and the countryside were neglected.

In
South Africa the economic and political weight given to mining meant that
electrification went in that direction and underlined the impoverishment and
separation of black communities left without. Social and class forces shaped electrification everywhere. In terms
of energy generation technology overall, it was with the invention of the
combined-cycle gas turbine that electricity power plants became more efficient
leading to large scale investment in gas pipelines, tying in carbon extraction
increasingly to geopolitics.

At the same time the global development
agencies, the IMF and World Bank, played a big part in the post-crisis
expansion of neo-liberal policies pushing a ‘standard model’ of electricity
market reforms across the developing world, reducing subsidies, and skewing
reward to foreign corporate investment with risks left to states to pick up,
and growing indebtedness of countries and people.

From
the 1990s fossil fuel consumption has intensified as the labour process has
begun to undergo significant change, with technological innovation not only
driving productivity but altering expectations of working time, of job security
and employment rights, and in the tendency towards mass consumption and debt. The
potential then for ‘de-coupling’ economic growth from resource use which more
efficient technologies promised has been overtaken by the scale and volume of
resource use, particularly oil and gas, and despite some attempts to wean off
it, coal as well.

Together
with rapidly increasing financialisation in the global economy, and the
co-option of new technologies to restore profitability, the money created from
energy transactions in the past thirty years or so has embedded fossil fuels in
world trade.

There
is hope in some quarters - and successes in divestment exist - for stranded
assets being a way out of this vicious circle. Pirani does not discuss
stranding assets as a tactic or strategy at much length. He considers the
weight of vested economic and political power to have shown itself well capable
of overshadowing such regulatory attempts as have been made.

It
is certainly now clear that the Rio, Kyoto and Paris protocols are of
themselves insufficient to make much difference, as the IPCC has found out.
Closer to home we need only look at how the Conservative government has reduced
support to renewables and maintains high subsidies for fossil fuel extraction.
That there might be a technologically inspired route out of fossil fuel
dependence which would free us from capitalist imperatives, as proposed by Paul
Mason or Snricek and Williams, is given short shrift by Pirani.

History
confounds them. He turns ‘automation to post-capitalism’ on its head, saying in
effect that while technological opportunity is moulded by the needs of capital
accumulation and reproduction, its own potential is in fact constrained, and
that we need a social and economic transformation to free the technologies that
will act more for natural and human benefit.

As
a historian Pirani well demonstrates that left to the political elites and
market reforms there is little chance indeed of de-carbonisation of the economy
going far. Carbon trading does not change stock market priorities nor begin to
tackle entrenched inequalities, as long as the rich world can continue to
cordon itself off.

And
‘’tiptoe steps’’ such as we have are very far from enough, as all the data on
most recent accelerations show so well. In a very useful chapter this book
outlines how the different sectors of energy consumption add up, namely from
industry, agriculture, military [so often underestimated] to transport,
buildings, households and waste which situates the context so much better than
the often heard division between what individuals contribute, or can do, and
what the system, state or other institutions contribute, or can do.

That
latter injunction –we can only do so much -too often tends to a feeling of
relative powerlessness. Pirani addresses the question of power head on.The potential of Internet related
technologies to conserve energy and enhance decentralized networks for
electricity distribution, and for that matter local generation and
distribution, are hardly tapped at all and impeded by large scale commercial
control which indeed has greatly added to wasteful consumption.

As
long as market-based solutions are the vector for change such state regulation
as is tried will only go so far, and much of the public discussion by elites
will be at the level of paying lip service. Decentralised grids are eminently
feasible, and renewables costs keep falling – but the market pricing structure
and subsidies still heavily favouring fossil fuels inhibits mainstream adoption
of smaller scale and renewable technologies.

This
book points towards a transformative economic and social approach to the use of
energy which challenges market predominance, and urges collective movement of
people in situations where they mobilise their own commitment and resources for
a different order capable of sustaining life and community not predicated on
inexorable economic growth.

It
reminds us very well that we cannot depend on existing elites, or new elites
for that matter, even well-meaning ones, if the world of markets remains
unscathed. It refers to protests and movements such as those in India, and in
Nigeria, against corporate or state vested interests of exploitation where
fossil fuel extraction and its human costs have been challenged, with some
inroads made.

It
does not offer particular suggestions on how collective struggles could
coalesce, or where alternatives to fossil fuel dependence through technology
could ally with mobilisations for economic and political change. But that is
now the challenge. Preston Road
anti-fracking action and the political implications now playing
out show how important it is to make such alliances. Pirani’s book gives all
the evidence needed to support such a movement.

Gordon Peters is a
political activist and a supporter of the Ecosocialist Network

Saturday, 20 October 2018

On a beautiful autumn day in London, hundreds of thousands of people attended the People's Vote march. Organisers said that more than 670,000 people joined the demonstration, one of the biggest public protests since the anti-Iraq war march in 2003.

The weather helped to produce a carnival atmosphere and the demonstrators were in a cheerful mood. I saw no problems and the police presence was pretty low key.

The crowd was certainly large, but it is difficult to assess the scale when you are in the middle of it. Parliament Square was packed and the crowd stretched all along Whitehall, and I could only inch along the road because of the numbers pouring towards the stage where the speeches were being made.

Many of the marchers were young people, who said that their future was being ruined by the decision to leave the European Union. Two of these young people told the Evening Standard why they had decided to come on the protest. Alice Beal said: "All of us were under 18 at the time
of the referendum," and Nicky Tarran said: "People say the British
people have spoken, we haven't."

Friday, 19 October 2018

The government is trying to bar amendments being
tabled by MPs to whatever deal is struck on Brexit with the European Union
(EU). MPs managed to amend the Brexit Bill to allow a ‘meaningful vote’ on the
result of the negotiations, but the government seems to think that meaningful
is a take it or leave it vote. The implication being that if the
government loses the vote, then the default position will be to have no deal at
all.

This was first revealed by Dominic Raab, the Brexit
Secretary, saying that amendments will not be allowed because amending it could
prevent it from being ratified. He wrote to the Commons’ procedure committee
hoping to secure its endorsement of this position, but Labour party members of
the committee managed to convince the committee to seek opinions from
independent constitutional experts, on whether this would be unconstitutional.

I think it would be unconstitutional and I can’t
really see how the government can get its way on this. This was perhaps reflected when
Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsome appeared
to be accepting of this when she said yesterday that, the reality before
the United Kingdom would ‘amount’ to an either/or choice on May’s deal, even if
the Commons were to debate possible amendments.

It is just about possible that the government will try
to use the ‘Royal Prerogative’ which is part of the British constitution, and
used for mainly foreign affairs matters, like deploying the armed forces and making or unmaking international treaties. Basically, the government can use this prerogative to sideline Parliament. Although, with MPs specifically
previously amending the legislation to have a proper say, it is debatable
whether or not the government could bar them now.

The government used the prerogative to trigger Article
50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, when notice was given to the EU of the UK
intention to leave the bloc. Use of the prerogative remains subject to the
common law duties of fairness and reason though. It is therefore possible to challenge
use of the prerogative by judicial review in most cases. This is what Gina
Miller did when she took the government to court, and won.

All of which leads me to think that this route will
not be attempted by the government over the final Brexit deal. Some Pro-EU MPs
are considering an amendment to the approval motion to authorise a second
referendum, whilst hard Brexit MPs are thinking about an amendment to limit the
timescale of any transition period. This is all normal constitutional and Parliamentary
behaviour, if rather inconvenient to government, but it is 'taking back control' in action.

Whatever Brexiters say about upholding ‘the will of
the people,’ constitutionally, the people are not ‘sovereign.’ Indeed, the
referendum itself was only advisory, as all referendums are under the British
constitution. Apart from where we have pooled our sovereignty with the EU, technically the
Monarch is sovereign, but in practice sovereignty in the UK is held by
Parliament, not ‘the people.’ You might disagree with this, but it is true all
the same.

The rather vague but effective slogan of ‘taking back
control’ deployed by Brexiters at the referendum, is surely meant to mean
ending pooled sovereignty with the EU and returning it entirely to the British
Parliament? But the way politics and politicians work, arguments are made on
the basis of whatever agenda the politicians are pursuing at the time. MPs by
and large know what our constitution consists of, even if it can be vague at times
and is infamously ‘unwritten,’ or least not all written down in one place.

Parliament is of course divided over Brexit, and shows
no signs of coming to a sensible compromise over the issue. I have argued
before that joining the European Economic Area when we leave the EU would be such a sensible compromise, but there doesn’t seem to be enough support in
Parliament for this. There is also no support for a no deal Brexit. So, what to do?

The way I see it, we have two options that could move
the country on from where we are today. The first, is a general election, where
either the government is changed or the complexion of MPs is, one way or
another. The second option is to put this back to the people in another referendum,
now that all of the implications have become clearer, with the option of
whatever deal we are offered, or staying on our current terms. Realistically, a
general election, and perhaps a referendum, will require an extension to
Article 50 beyond 29 March next year.

The People's Vote March in London tomorrow (Saturday)
will demand a final say referendum. Assemble at 12 noon at Park Lane, near
Marble Arch, and march to a rally at Parliament Square at 2pm. More details here.

Tuesday, 16 October 2018

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) Commission
on Economic Justice have produced an evaluation of the taxation of wealth in
the UK. The report, ‘A Wealth
of Difference’ concludes that wealth inequality is damaging the UK’s
society and economy, whilst the current tax system is failing to tackle and in
some cases is even exacerbating inequality. The authors propose a number of
reforms to the system including replacing council tax with an annual property
tax and replacing business rates with a land value tax.

Wealth Inequality in
the UK

Household net wealth in Great Britain is valued at £12.8
trillion, of which 44 per cent is owned by the wealthiest 10 per cent and only
9 per cent is owned by the bottom 50 per cent of people. Wealth is twice as
unevenly distributed as income in the UK, with a Gini coefficient of 0.62 for
wealth compared to 0.32 for income.

Wealth refers to assets including property, financial
wealth, pension wealth and physical wealth such as vehicles. Wealth inequality
in the UK fell after the World Wars but has been increasing since the 1980s due
to neo-liberal policies. This has been driven by increasing returns to capital
compared to labour which means those who earn income from assets have seen
their incomes grow more than those who work for a wage. Underlying causes
include house price inflation and falling homeownership, financial asset price
inflation, automation, low pay and weak labour bargaining power.

Increases in inequality have clear social implications.
Beyond this, it is also limiting for economic growth. Those with greater
incomes have a lower marginal propensity to consume, meaning they are more likely
to hoard their wealth rather than spend it in the economy. The current system
of taxation incentivises ‘rent seeking’ behaviour which means that people
invest in existing assets such as housing which pushes up the price of that
asset without generating any new economic output or activity.

The Current Tax
System

One of the most powerful tools to combat wealth inequality
is taxation to fund progressive spending. Currently, income from labour is
taxed more heavily than income from wealth. Wealth in the UK is primarily taxed
through capital gains tax (CGT), inheritance tax (IHT), dividend income
taxation and stamp duties which bring in only 4 per cent of total tax revenues.
In contrast, income and consumption taxes bring in 60 per cent of tax revenue.

The report identifies several key problems with the current
system of wealth taxation: there are significant opportunities for avoidance,
the system fails to raise large amounts of revenue, it creates economic
distortions (for example, exemptions to CGT for first homes,encourages investment in property over other
assets, differences in taxation of dividends vs income encourages senior pay to
be dividend based).

The under-taxing of income from wealth compared to income
from labour is regressive since wealthier individuals are likely to have
greater income from assets than labour income and finally it will be fiscally
unsustainable in the long run to raise sufficient revenue if income from labour
continues to decline relative to income from capital.

Report Recommendations:

Tax all income from
wealth under the income tax schedule

Treating income from capital as the same as income from
labour from a taxation perspective would make the system considerably more
progressive. In addition, it would increase incentives for labour market
participation by the wealthy, raise more revenue and reduce opportunities for
avoidance by simplifying the system (removing exemptions). Finally, shifting
the balance of taxation towards capital rather than labour means the government
will continue to be able to raise revenues in the face of increasing automation
and technological change.

Abolish inheritance
tax and introduce a lifetime donee-based gift tax

Wealth transfers give an unearned advantage to the recipient
and work against social mobility, creating a strong social and economic
justification for taxation. Inheritance tax currently has many exemptions and
opportunities for avoidance that could be improved upon by a gift tax.

The report proposes taxing any gifts above a lifetime allowance
of £125,000 under income tax. However without improvements to HMRC’s digital
infrastructure it would have to rely on self-reporting and would require
valuations of non-monetary gifts. The resolution foundation estimated such a
tax could raise £15bn in 2020/21 (£9.2bn more than the current IHT).

Abolish non-domiciled
status and reform the transparency of trusts

Improvements to transparency could reduce opportunities for
avoidance as well as reducing the complexity of administering the system.

Introduce an annual property tax to replace council tax and
eventually stamp duty.

The report recommends replacing council tax entirely with a
new property tax. This wold be proportional to the present day value of homes
and is different to a land value tax since it also taxes the value of the
property itself. This would be levied on owners rather than occupiers (however
owners are likely to pass this on in the form of higher rents).

A deferral mechanism would be needed to protect those who
are asset-rich but cash-poor. Since the tax is linked to property values it
would help to recapture some of the value generated by public investments in
infrastructure such as new train stations. A charge of 0.5 per cent of property
values is estimated to generate at least as much revenue as the current system.
This could also replace stamp duty land tax in the future.It would be possible to introduce progressive
rates, exempting properties of low value and allowing for regional variation.

Introduce a land
value tax to replace business rates

Land value tax has always been popular among economists. It
taxes the value of the land (not the property on it) based on its most valuable
use under existing planning permissions. This would penalise those who own land
and do not develop it, incentivising more efficient use of land, without
penalising those who make improvements to their properties. This would require
considerable effort to value land regularly and establish a register of land
ownership however it has been achieved in some European countries and elsewhere
across the world.

Such a tax would support productive investment (unlike
business rates), capture unearned rents from ownership of land and reduce
incentives for speculation on land. It may also make parts of the country with
less valuable land more attractive to businesses. An exemption to the first
£20,000 per hectare would exclude most agricultural land. A rate of 4 per cent
would generate the same value as the current business rates system.

These are all good ideas. We need to tax the wealth held in
the UK more fairly if we want decent public services for all.

Sunday, 14 October 2018

The recent
IPCC report has received widespread attention. The report states that rapid and
bold actions are necessary to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change
and that the goals of the Paris Accord will be insufficient.

This has
resulted in an outpouring of opinion pieces calling for individuals to take
actions in their daily lives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to
pressure elected officials to take significant steps to support renewable
energy. This sense of urgency is critically needed, yet most of these calls for
action are misguided due to a widespread misdiagnosis of the climate change
problem.

To address a
problem, it is most effective to identify the root cause. One might argue that
the root cause of climate change is fossil fuel combustion. However, this
overlooks how our current economic system not only continues to protect and
sustain the fossil fuel industry but also drives the continuous increases in
production and consumption causing environmental degradation at large. What is
this system? Growth-dependent capitalism. Here we focus on the impacts of that
growth.

The
prioritisation of economic growth is what makes highly effective actions, such
as buying-out or nationalizing fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground,
infeasible. A recently released UN document, related to the 2019 Global
Sustainable Development Report, suggests that the root cause of climate change
is the economic system, namely one that prioritises profits at the expense of
ecological and social well-being.

Evidence is
mounting that demonstrates how prioritising a growing economy is the true
driver of climate change. Data shows a positive relationship between economic
growth and GHG emissions. This makes sense since GDP growth correlates with
material production, including carbon: GDP growth by 1% equals a 0.6% growth in
material use a 0.5–0.7% increase in carbon emissions.

Even
scientists working on carbon budgets have come forward stating that reducing
GHG emissions is incompatible with economic growth. While proponents of “green
growth” support the idea of increasing GDP while reducing GHG emissions (known
as absolute decoupling), this has yet to be realized. In most cases, decoupling
in developed nations has been a result of increased carbon-intensive production
in developing nations.

Greening
growth through alternative energy, efficient technology, and carbon markets has
had limited and paradoxical impacts. Efficiency gains are in many cases
partially or completely offset by increased consumption. Because we are not
implementing policies to decrease fossil fuel use, a unit of energy produced by
alternative energy does not replace a unit of energy produced by fossil fuels
and is correlated with increased total energy use. In a system prioritising
economic growth the effectiveness of green alternatives will continue to be
constrained by increasing levels of production and consumption.

In addition,
market mechanisms that prioritise profit have not slowed climate change. The EU
Emissions Trading System, the oldest and largest carbon market, has not
dramatically reduced emissions. In 2017, the EU policy director stated that
“the EU carbon market will continue to fail at its task to spur green
investments and phase out coal.” Due to these realities, we need to move beyond
an economy that prioritises growth.

But isn’t
economic growth critical for a thriving society and human well-being? Actually,
economic growth has only been a social priority for a relatively short time. As
stated by ecological economist Herman Daly, it is largely believed that
“without economic growth all progress is at an end.” He counters this belief by
asserting, “[o]n the contrary, without growth . . . true progress finally will
have a chance.” Stopping economic growth doesn’t mean we cannot meet our needs.
We will still have enough. We will simply put an end to the production and
consumption of more and more unnecessary things that harm us and the
environment for the sake of a 3% annual increase in GDP.

In fact,
studies show that economic growth that goes beyond satisfying basic needs does
not increase happiness. What it does is push us beyond ecological limits in
dangerous ways. By putting growth in its place, we can prioritise people,
climate, and prosperity before profit. More and more people are starting to
question whether a capitalist system that prioritises profit and growth above
all is really a good thing.

These ideas
are spurring on an increasing number of academic and activist projects that
offer alternatives. For example, the degrowth movement supports planned
economic contraction and dematerialization in developed nations. Degrowth
proponents explain why people would be happier in this new economic system.
While there would be reduced total material production and consumption, there
would be growth in social services, well-being, sharing, community agriculture,
energy and worker cooperatives, not to mention a stronger sense of community.

This does not
necessitate living without modern conveniences, just not more and more of
them.A range of degrowth policies have
been proposed, including work time reduction, which has been shown to reduce
material production, energy use, and GHG emissions while increasing health and
well-being. Policies to reduce working hours would represent a critical step in
restructuring our economy to address climate change.

Perhaps this
all seems radical. That would be appropriate, as the word “radical” from the
Latin radicalis means relating to the root. To accurately diagnose the climate
change problem, we have to get at the root – our economic system. As the
authors of the UN document explains, we need to “focus on life-improving and
emissions-reducing goals rather than abstract economic goals.” They call for a
new system where “economic activity will gain meaning not by achieving economic
growth but by rebuilding infrastructure and practices toward a post-fossil fuel
world with a radically smaller burden on natural ecosystems.”

They conclude
by making clear that “states are the only actors that have the legitimacy and
capacity to fund and organize large-scale transitions.” While communities move
forward with important projects that put ecosystems and people first, we also
need to push our governments to recognize economic growth as the root cause of
climate change and implement policies to re-create our economy.

Diana Stuart is an Associate Professor
in the Sustainable Communities Program and in the School of Earth and
Sustainability at Northern Arizona University. Her work focuses on climate
change mitigation and adaptation, agriculture, conservation, animals studies,
political economy, and social theory.

Ryan Gunderson is an Assistant
Professor of Sociology and Social Justice Studies in the Department of
Sociology and Gerontology and Affiliate of the Institute for the Environment
and Sustainability at Miami University. His research interests include
environmental sociology, the sociology of technology, social theory, political
economy, and animal studies.

This work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Friday, 12 October 2018

Princess Eugenie today married Jack Brooksbank, a “tequila
ambassador,” whatever that may be, in Windsor. The lavish wedding was replete
with carriage drawn by four white horses, and is estimated to have cost the
public purse around £2 million, in security, policing and road closure costs,
although it has probably cost UK tax payers a great deal more. Princess Eugenie
is the daughter of the Andrew and Sarah, the Duke and Duchess of York, and
ninth in line to the throne.

Eugenie, who is employed as a director at the London art
gallery Hauser & Wirth, does not receive any money from the sovereign
grant, which replaced the civil list, but is supported from her father’s
private income. But who pays what for Royal marriages is a somewhat murky area.

Campaign group Republic,
whose petition for no taxpayers money to be used has attracted almost £50,000
signatures, says that the cost to tax payers could well be considerably higher
than the £2 million official ‘estimate.’ The wedding appears to be of similar
scale as Harry and Meghan’s (Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) wedding earlier
this year, a wedding that they say cost taxpayers over £35 million, and was
officially estimated at £2 million. A spokesperson for the group added:

“Taxpayers deserve to know exactly how much money is being
spent and which of our public services are being diverted to make the wedding
possible. The government should make transparency the priority and publish a
report of all costs to taxpayers.”

Eugenie doesn’t receive any money directly from the ‘Sovereign
Grant’ but her father does, although I’ve been unable to find out how much
exactly he does get. It is likely that he also gets money from his mother too, the
Queen. Funding for the Sovereign Grant also comes from a percentage of the
profits of the Crown Estate revenue (initially set at 15%) and will be reviewed
every five years. Last year these profits totalled £304 million. This property
though was in some way plundered in the past from whoever owned the buildings and
land.

The Queen also generates income from her land and property
portfolio. These assets are known as the Duchy of Lancaster and are held in
trust for the sovereign. The Duchy is managed and run for the Queen and she
receives all the net profits – about £12.5 million a year at the last count.
This income is referred to as the Privy Purse. Again this land was plundered at
some stage in history by the Royals ancestors.

The Duchy of Lancaster is one of two royal duchies, the
other being the Duchy of Cornwall which provides income to the Prince of Wales.
The Prince of Wales is entitled to the annual net revenue surplus of the Duchy,
which was worth £20.8 million last year. Prince Charles also receives money
from the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.

All of which leads to staggeringly
casual wasteful spending on the part of the Royals, Prince Andrew, for
example, squandered £14,692 on a round trip to see the golf at Muirfield. His
younger brother, Prince Edward, meanwhile, took a £46,198 charter flight to
Sofia, Bucharest and Ljubljana.

Although, Republic’s petition has attracted almost 50,000
signatures, which is pretty modest by on-line petition proportions, I noticed from television footage and reports, that there was only a sparse crowd that came out to watch proceedings,
despite free tickets being offered to the public.

Personally, I don’t know anyone who is remotely interested
in this wedding, of what is a fairly minor member of the Royal family. I’d bet
most people didn’t even know who Eugenie was, until this wedding story broke. I
do sense a growing ambivalence from the British public to the monarchy
generally these days, if not outright hostility.

Some have tried to compare the policing costs of this
wedding to that of public demonstrations, but organisers do provide their own
stewarding and protest is a fundamental part of our democracy. The Monarchy and
assorted hangers on are merely a reminder of our undemocratic constitution and
practices.

It doesn’t seem to me to be right, when the population at large are being asked to tighten their belts further after eight years of austerity, with benefits cut for the poorest in the country, leading to a rising number of suicides, that such largesse with public funds should be permitted, when it comes to royal weddings.